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<h2>Advantages of Fieldbus</h2>

The fieldbus has a multitude of advantages that the end users will 
benefit from. The major advantage of the fieldbus, and the one that is 
most attractive to the end user is its reduction in capital costs. The 
savings attained by the user stem from three main areas, initial 
savings, maintenance savings, and savings due to improved systems 
performance.<p>

</p><h3>Initial Savings</h3>
One of the main features of the fieldbus is its significant reduction in
 wiring. Each process cell requires only one wire to be run to the main 
cable, with a varying number of cells available. The cost of installing 
field equipment in a fieldbus system is thus significantly reduced. 
Installation costs are further reduced due to the fact that the fieldbus
 it is a multi-drop rather than point-to-point system and the multidrop 
network can offer a 5:1 reduction in field wiring expense.<p>

The price of equipment is reduced significantly in a fieldbus system, 
with savings of approximately $50 per field device possible.</p><p>

The fieldbus system requires less labour to install than conventional 
bus systems, and saves money due to a reduction in materials needed for 
the installation.</p><p>
	
The simpler system design implies that fewer system drawings will be 
needed in order to develop a fieldbus system. This also has the 
advantage that the simpler design will result in less complex and faster
 bus systems.</p><p>

</p><h3>Maintenance Savings</h3>
The fact that the fieldbus system is less complex than conventional bus 
systems implies that there will be less overall need for maintenance. 
The simplification of systems means that the long term reliability of 
the bus system is increased.<p>

With the fieldbus system, it is possible for the operators to easily see
 all of the devices included in the system and to also easily interpret 
the interaction between the individual devices. This will make 
discovering the source of any problems and carrying out maintenance much
 simpler, and thus will reduce the overall debugging time.</p><p>

The debugging and maintenance of the system will also be enhanced due to
 the fact that fieldbus enables online diagnostics to be carried out on 
individual field devices. The online diagnostics include functions such 
as open wire detection and predictive maintenance and simplify tasks 
such as device calibration.</p><p>

</p><h3>Improved Systems Performance</h3>
Fieldbus allows the user increased flexibility in the design of the bus 
system. Some algorithms and control procedures that with conventional 
bus systems must be contained in control programs can now reside in the 
individual field devices, reducing the overall size of the main control 
system. This reduces the overall systems cost and makes future expansion
 a simpler prospect.<p>
	
System performance is enhanced with the use of fieldbus technology due 
to the simplification of the collection of information from field 
devices. Measurement and device values will be available to all field 
and control devices in engineering units. This eliminates the need to 
convert raw data into the required units and will free the control 
system for other more important tasks. The reduction in information 
complication will allow the development of better and more effective 
process control systems.</p><p>

With fieldbus technology, two-way communication between field devices 
and the control system is made possible. System performance is enhanced 
due to the ability to communicate directly between two field devices 
rather than via the control system. This also enables several related 
field devices to be combined into one device.</p><p>

With fieldbus technology, field instruments can be calibrated, 
initialised, operated and repaired faster than most conventional analog 
instrumentation. this leads to an overall reduction in time required to 
operate the fieldbus system.</p><p>

</p><h3>Other Advantages</h3>
As well as the cost advantages that fieldbus technology embodies, there 
are many other miscellaneous advantages that are included in the 
fieldbus package.<p>

Although it is a major challenge trying to develop a single worldwide 
protocol for process control, there are currently only two real 
protocols for fieldbus, being ISP and WorldFIP and while there is still 
two protocols rather than a world standard, it is better than a possible
 many. Work is being done to merge the two protocols into a standard 
which will be a major advantage. The fact that eventually all fieldbus 
equipment will be standardised will mean that expansion of a system or 
addition of field devices will be extremely simple, requiring no 
interfaces or converters.</p><p>

The fieldbus protocol involves only four layers and a set of management 
services. Fieldbus has the advantage that the user should not have to be
 concerned with the Data Link layer or the Application layer. As far as 
the end user is concerned, they should simply work. The user will only 
be required to have a limited knowledge of the management services, 
because some of the information generated by them will be needed if a 
problem occurs in the system. In fact, it should only be necessary for 
the user to concern themselves with the Physical and User layers.</p><p>

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